Passion is feeding / all your innards loop by loop / to ever-hungry spaces that can’t be filled, letting it take / all of you split to the last strand of hair, dropped / where it disappeared, / spending everything from skin to toe in minuscule embrace, / never warming whole, and being delivered fresh / out the other end, / sacred and profane.”

Soeun Seo is a poet/translator from South Korea. Her translations of Kim Yi-deum’s poetry have been published or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review and Circumference. Her original works can be found at Potluck Magazine, Witch Craft Magazine, and Fuck Art, Let’s Dance!

SAFE TRAVELS, DON’T DIE

on the last night I felt like my futon was a boat and we were spooning along the Lethe

toward our deaths and in our mouths instead of coins there were pieces of chocolate
hell was warm all around us like blankets

I wasn’t sure if we were dead but I didn’t want to be certain

I’ve returned and you are leaving

promises are addicting because we don’t believe them

I’ve started to take note of where the stars hide in this neighborhood

remember when we walked along the bushes and watched how the night fades
beginning with the shades of the forest

the lagoon sat perfectly still holding in the ghosts of buildings
like a breath underseas, under siege

how many times did you get lost in that forest to find the perfect shadow
to hide in and feed me berries
like a secret or a promise

we kept finding each other closer than we thought

and it scared me

if I hold out my hand you would take it—small yellow flowers sing cheerfully by the cliff
but we are not supposed to pluck them

Traveller, I know of the magic you are about to enter
beauty will boil over the roads you step and you will crouch to lap them up

but so much magic can make you feel so mortal

careful not to forget what you looked like in the mirror

traveling starts to feel a lot like being lost
you get so used to taking off you want to leave your own shadow behind

I feel the most homeless when I gaze at a new city and it stares back at me
because it knows I will walk out on it shortly

if on some evenings you find yourself lost I hope it will console you to think of me
thinking of you at a beach neither of us would call home

I am imagining you back into my studio so we can be naked together

we dance for Dionysus and forget where we put the condoms

you tell me I feel like home and I like your lies a lot but I should
be honest—I don’t know where home is either

a strip of opalescent night sky hangs over the eaves of student slums like streamers

today I sat on the tree over that cliff to watch the evening bruise the sky in professionally
perfect pink gradations
the moon stared down
a glittering boat for drunken dismimeanors

a wind took me by the neck and told me to keep my fucking eyes open

because the best wonders are the ones you can’t share

and a wonder is only wondrous if it scares you a bit

it feels like death, eternal peace in a casket with room for a few more bodies

someday I could lie on your back and feel your voice tremble your skin as you try to describe it
but that is another promise

go now, my rambler, the world is out there, and when you are roaming remember

Being suspicious of men began when I was twelve and a classmate walked up to me, outright groping my emerging breast.

This story already shows the seeds of a dynamic I still experience and tried to properly put into words only yesterday when a male friend asked me to. There is: the shock and disbelief that someone just invaded my private space, without even hesitating. The perceived helplessness, which is hard to admit for someone like me who thinks of themselves as strong. But apparently, I can be able to articulate what I want in many areas and still feel helpless in other situations. A comparison: the same kid threw snowballs at me on the way to school and I had no problem at all reporting that. In the groping situation, a teacher was even closer, in the same room even. Yet, it didn’t even occur to me to…

“Passion lies deep inside, like a statue in a stone, waiting to be freed, imagining its creator chipping away at the layers covering it. It is the seed of a belief. A flame on the bottom of the sea. Blue and restless. It is a wave always moving through you and carrying you away and along.”

Wrapped up thru Jeffrey’s art is his work as a critic, eco-activist, and publisher. He currently writes criticism for American Book Review, ArtNexus, & White Hot Magazine. He is a long time resident of the East Village in New York City, & produces literary events at KGB Lit Bar and La Mama ETC in conjunction with his magazine, Live Mag!—that said, he’s best known for his lyricism, having published fourteen books of poetry, including “Triple Crown, Sonnets” from Spuyten Duyvil and “Radio Poems” (forthcoming from The Operating System).

“Writing is a struggle. The goal is to maintain what you feel is your own voice while keeping it fresh and vital. My girlfriend told me, ‘You should read 20 poems for every poem you write.’ That is good advice. I find that after I read something I have new ideas and insights about subjects and structures.

So, I’m still focusing on themes I’ve developed over a long time, like exploring and incorporating mythological characters and song lyrics. And at the same time I’m being true to my style, I’m trying to be innovative and react to work I’ve read or heard.

As a publisher, I seem to have my own quixotic way of selecting work that hasn’t really changed since I started. I took Ted’s advice. Live Mag! is still built around artists, poets and reviewers I interact with. And it expands beyond that to include work my restless antenna find and want to share.” -Jeffrey, from our interview below

Teré Fowler-Chapman is a gender fluid writer–by way of this sonoran desert | by way of the boot’s bayou. This poet is a winner of National Arts Strategies’ Creative Community Fellowship, an educator, and family man. Teré is the founder of Words on the Ave, downtown Tucson’s spoken-word reading series, curated by the city, for the city.

“Everyone brings what they think they need. Then the rest of the city just listens,” Teré says over coffee outside Cafe Passe, the venue space used by WOTA. Our conversation is recorded by a mic-emulation app on my phone, balanced on a small pile of books between us, & framed by a consistent stream of folks recognizing Teré, asking how they’ve been & about WOTA, local poets & writers & listeners who’ve been influenced by their impact on our desert city.

“Come as you are. & as long as you’re coming from a good place, I think Tucson will respect you.”

ODE TO THE SKY RESTING ABOVE GALUSHA HILL FARM

INSTRUMENTALS BY TORRES HODGES

When I look at you
Staring back at me
I know you call me by my ancestors’ name

Sweet pile of resting bone Carrier of the biggest smile Worrier of the world around you Breathe

You want tell me
That
That you are resting over of all our names
That you are witness to all the blood
Building on the street corners
Racing to the pavement
Rising in my veins

We both know
Somewhere I am hanging
By the burn of a bullet
By the turn of a street corner
By silence

We both know
That somewhere I am living

Searching for the farthest tree
Wrapping my fingers around a raspberry
Pulling it from the earth
Placing it on my tongue

Somewhere I am
Rubbing noses with a lamb
Grasping platforms in a lake
Wrapping around laughter
Swallowing food for thought

Somewhere I am
Watching painters press out skylines on page
Pitching my truth to myself
Crafting community with my bare hands
Learning how to say my name

We both know
I am somewhere
Staring up at you
Hoping to see you shoot a star
And that you are

You are somewhere
Looking down at me
Calling me by my ancestors’ name

Sweet pile of resting bone Carrier of the biggest smile Worrier of the world all around you

No shooting stars tonight There is enough you dying Don’t you think?

THE FIRST

DEDICATED TO O.

My only advice to him is to remember everything. Remember the way your palms wrapped behind your back and didn’t know how to pray backwards. Remember the officer’s name. Remember the way they talked through you. Remember when you said it was your first time being arrested and he responded “really?” Remember the first poem you shot to the sky. Remember the blood rushing into your veins. Remember the moment you cried. Remember the first time you thought about being a better man. Remember the man you are already. Remember the way he questioned the white clerk when they declined pressing charges on you. Remember it was just a pack of gum. Remember you are full of forgiveness and deserve it back. Remember you love and deserve it back. Remember it was just gum and just like that. Remember it’s your city but it’s not your justice system. Remember you will fit the description whether you pick the gum up or not, whether you did it or not, whether you are guilty or not. Remember folks are being murdered these days with purchased skittles in their hands in the middle of middle class in the middle of morning. Remember they will criminalize you. Remember they will demoralize you. Remember there’s nothing cool about filling the bed they made for you. Remember to make your own bed. Remember the way you are rapped about, the way you are televised, the way you are publicized. Remember the definition of fitting in was born out of standing out. Remember to write your own story. Remember that you are a man afraid of fucking up. Remember that’s when it happens. Our men fucking up.

Remember
Before this store
Before this system
Before this pack of gum
You were here first

Here is a group that gladly lives in a yurt for some fucking reason, drives across the United States on the regular, and generally does whatever it can in bringing experimental literature to the masses. Far too often the weirdest of literature lives a life of leisure in major cities, never venturing outside their happy walls. Nostrovia has no central location they truly do their own thing.”